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Cult leader held for child deaths

Tom Walker

March 14 2004, 12:00am, The Sunday Times

Neighbours claimed that Marcus Wesson, 57, had fathered the children by several different women. The Vietnam veteran was arrested after a two-hour standoff with police. He walked out of the house on Friday evening and surrendered, apparently covered in blood.

Police also discovered 10 coffins in the house, in the Roeding Park neighbourhood of Fresno, a city 190 miles southeast of San Francisco.

The children were aged between one and eight, and the two other bodies were those of a woman, 20, and a girl, 17. Witnesses said it took the police several hours to disentangle the corpses from the clothing and officers were seen weeping as they carried the bodies from the house.

“I’ve never experienced anything of this nature,” said Jerry Dyer, the…